Read the full story here: https://www.dal.ca/faculty/management/news-events/news/2024/05/17/dr__vivian_howard_retirement.html

After 30 years in the classroom, Dr. Vivian Howard thinks she’s taught her final course — and it was extra special. Anna Jacquart, her daughter, was a student in that final class. Anna was born in 1994 when her mother was completing the Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS). It seems fitting that Dr. Howard, who recently retired, share her passion with her daughter as she works toward the same degree.

After moving to Halifax in the early 1990s so her husband could take a position at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Dr. Howard wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. A friend had completed a Master of Library Science at the University of British Columbia and she liked the idea of a flexible, professional designation that built on her experience.

It was an exciting time to be studying library science, she explains. Computers were new and discussions about the internet were just beginning. “I knew these were going to be big things. Things that were going to shift how we learn and navigate in the world,” says Dr. Howard.

‘The Meryl Streep of professors’

After graduation, Dr. Howard worked as a librarian at NSCAD and the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS) and, in 1996, Dr. Bertrum MacDonald reached out. Then Director of the School of Information Management (SIM), Dr. MacDonald invited her to teach a course in Information Sources in the Humanities and Social Sciences. As she explains, “I was learning at the same time [the students] were learning. It was a real pleasure.”

“Vivian stood out in her very first class, and quickly demonstrated both academic prowess and a suite of management capabilities,” says Dr. MacDonald, now a professor emeritus in the faculty. “Her thoughtful, caring, outgoing personality is an important factor in her numerous successes as a teacher and colleague.”

Her students agree. “The teaching and research of Dr. Howard is what first drew me as a student to the MLIS and she is among the top reasons I remain here,” says Alison Brown, an instructor in the Department of Information Science, and an Interdisciplinary PhD candidate. “Our cohort referred to Vivian as ‘the Meryl Streep of professors’ — fiercely bright, unflappable, versatile, unwaveringly committed, graceful, and elegant. I have had the enormous privilege of learning from Vivian as her student, supervisee, mentee, colleague, and friend.”